This past weekend was a bit of an anomaly for me. My wife was working two 12-hour shifts at the hospital, and my mother-in-law was keeping our two kids on Saturday, so I had a day pretty much to myself. Of course, there’s always something to do around the house like laundry, dishes, vacuuming, etc. but I decided to take the day and have a bit of fun. I loaded my Strat, Pantheon and vintage Twin head up and hit the road, off to visit a great friend of mine who lives two hours away. I had to get stuff done that day and couldn’t shuck everything I was doing, so I left the house at 6:30am and drove in the cold, wet rain up to the coast and proceeded to have a great time. Roxy and I have been Facebook friends for several years, and we’ve also traded and sold gear to the point it’s almost comical. I swear he’s got half of the stuff I’ve ever sold, and some of the gear I’ve even bought back from him and inevitably sold back. We jammed for about two hours and had an awesome time just hanging out and talking gear. He got to try my original ’68 Twin, and I got to try some of the amps he’d mentioned in our conversations (including a hand-built 20w from Bruce Egnater, his home-built amp, and one of the coolest little amps I’ve ever played in my life (more on that in a second). We messed with some pedals (including our Black Friday release) and just had a blast. It was great catching up, and it made me realize several things about myself and my gear choices.

First things first, I’ll discuss that amp I was talking about above. This was a 1-watt Marshall head and cab with a .25 watt switch on the back called the Offset. To be completely honest I’ve always sort of written off sub-20 watt amps as not being something that would ever tickle my fancy. I play into a clean platform almost exclusively, so the idea of such a low headroom amp seemed like a waste of time. I will be the first to admit that it was a stupid idea and that they are incredible. I plugged straight in and for only 1 watt and a single 10” speaker, it sounded MASSIVE. I was a bit shaken to my core because of it and I’ve pretty much been thinking about that amp constantly since then. I’m trying to work out a deal, as it’s a limited-edition amp and I WANT IT SO BAD. GAS hasn’t been quite this furious in a long time. It’s got extremely simple controls: Volume (Labeled Loudness) and Tone, then the Hi and Lo setting for the power scaling. That’s it. No frills. No FX loop, no drastic EQ changes. Simple and to the point. I REALLY liked it.

Enough about that epic little amp, onto more self-reflection and epiphanies (lol). Normally I’m one to pack up a big board and maybe bring a couple of guitars to a jam. Variety is the spice of life and all. I felt like I was going out on a bit of a limb and leaving my comfort zone by just taking a single pedal and a Strat that I’d only recently just modified with upgraded pickups and hadn’t taken it out for a jam yet. There was no real reason to worry, as it’s an American Pro strat that I had a guard wired-up from David Maue from Tonal Concept Pickups, where he had an original set of John Mayer Big Dippers that were wired in the neck and middle, and one of his custom PAF’s in the bridge. He put a push/pull pot in the bridge tone control to split the coil in the humbucker, and the other tone control allows me to use all 3 pickups together. As I said before, the only pedal I took was a Pantheon with a fresh 9v battery, and a TC Electronic headstock tuner for good measure. The greatest feeling was plugging into each amp and feeling confident in what I was doing. Admittedly my playing wasn’t perfect as I rarely get to practice much anymore (life, you know how it is), but overall there wasn’t a tone I felt I couldn’t achieve with that setup. Being totally honest it would have to be the fingers and the mind behind it to make that combo sound bad, but it was nice not having to hide behind a board like I’ve used as a safety net for so long. It did, however, dawn on me that with my lack of practice came the lack of remembering how to play most of the songs I used to know how to play. I’ve spent so much time noodling and learning riffs and just messing around that it was a bit disconcerting. Good thing is I know exactly what to work on, as I do want to get back to being able to play some covers like I used to. The old adage of “If you don’t use it, you lose it” was abundantly clear.

I guess the biggest thing I can take from all of this is that I’m thankful to have close friends who can talk gear, inspire GAS, and allow me to just be myself and play. It was nice having the guitar I had schemed over for so long and mess with to be just right turned out exactly how I wanted. That’s the first guitar where I sat down at the end of the day and had absolutely nothing to find wrong with it or a desire for it to do more. In the end, I will say that a lot of the tone comes from the hands, but having the right tools to translate what you’re putting out helps quite a bit and inspires confidence as well.

I was doing my typical boredom-induced zombie scrolling deal on Facebook the other day and happened upon a Woody Harrelson meme that said, “When people who only play “original music” crap on my cover band” and has Woody drying his eyes with money. It made me laugh, but it also made me think of another post I saw a while back that argued that cover bands aren’t “local music.” Both of these polarizing posts kind made me question where musicians place their value in their music, and I just wanted to talk through some of the points here (especially after having a discussion with a friend who has very different opinions than mine).

I’ll start from my end because it’s what I’m most familiar with. I love writing music and creating riffs and songs, but at the basis of my playing, I just enjoy playing covers. They’re fun, they get people up and moving because they’re identifiable and it’s a relatively straightforward thing that you can build from with your own unique flourishes should you choose to or play it exactly like the records...the choice is up to the player. For me, I like playing it note for note with the recording. It’s equal parts nostalgia and the desire for perfectionism is a world that lacks it completely. My OCD makes me want to nail each note exactly how the pros did it, and when I finally accomplish it then I feel successful. That’s been a driving force and where the bar has been set for myself since I started playing. I’ve always played covers because that’s actually how I’ve learned a lot of theory is piecing it together how the pros do it, because I don’t have the focus to sit down and practice scales…I never was a “studier.” When I did learn scales, it turned me into a robot because of that cushy feeling of false safety; if I stayed in the box I knew I couldn’t play a dreaded wrong note. But, it led my lead-work to be…scaley? No emotion, just notes in the scale. So, I went back to piecing theory together from songs, and that’s how I’ve personally connected the dots. It can be considered derivative if you broke it down, but it works for me and makes me happy and I try to play to the song and the band as much as trying to stand out.

My buddy is from the opposite line of thought. He gets ultimate enjoyment from writing songs and riffs. His fulfilment comes when he creates a lead lick or catchy rhythm part that he wouldn’t mind hearing again. He knows a few songs, but 95% of the time he chooses to create something in a jam than to cover a song, it’s just not interesting to him. He’s very into unique tones and doesn’t want to sound like Angus Young or EVH or any of the classics. He wants to create his own sound and for lack of a better description, to leave his own mark on the world. It’s something that I never wrapped my head around as a teenager as we’d go to jams and he’d want to make something up instead of playing a known song (to him that was boring). As we got older we both realized that a lot of what’s so great about guitar is the ability to adapt, so we’ve made stuff work.

Fundamentally, going back to the meme’s as referencing (welcome to citation in 2018), who is wrong and who is right? The answer? Both are right and wrong. I know, that sounds like a cop-out but hear me out. There’s playing music for fun, and then there’s playing music to earn money (surplus income, or sole income if you’re a full-time musician). You’ve taken a lot of time to hone your craft, and exposure bucks don’t pay the rent, unfortunately. So, fair compensation for the service you’re providing is what’s needed. To that end, a musician must be willing to adapt to what the customer is expecting. Whether that’s a bar gig trying to help sell some food and beer for the venue, or whatever scenario arises. In general, however, people are looking for identifiable songs. I’ve had several friends who have gone to bars to find out the band was playing nothing but originals, and they ended up leaving. It’s just the society we live in. Everyone has to start somewhere, and many of the famous acts played covers until they got their foot in the door and added in their own material along the way. I guess my point is that there can’t be a polarizing thought-process when it comes to music. Being part of a community means helping it grow, and admittedly it’s something that you shouldn’t have to sacrifice your own integrity to achieve either. My point is, even the biggest stars in music STILL play covers, because there’s something identifiable and nostalgic about hearing those notes, and sort of tying those nostalgic feelings to the personality of the artist covering them…sort of a way of the person covering the songs to express a bit of who they are and what they love.

In the end, what is the point of cutting down another musician? It doesn’t matter if you’re in a cover band or an original band in the end. If you’re doing what you love, screw it, it doesn’t matter what people think. I’ve seen discussions of covers being derivative, but that’s something that is defined by each player.

The time has come where I’m burnt out on gear, and my chase for tone has come full circle. In 2011 I was probably the happiest with my playing that I had ever been. My tone was great, my rig was stable, and I was focused on playing more than anything. My skillset was at an all-time high, which for me, was being able to cover a few Brad Paisley songs note for note along with the recording. Admittedly they were some of the easier songs, but I had set my own bar of expectation relatively low as I have minimal self-esteem, and surpassing and completing that gave me the most pride in the world. I was actively playing regularly, with friends in a band as well as at church. I was using the same guitars for several years and GAS didn’t really exist aside from unobtainable guitars and amps that were completely out of reach. I had a PRS Custom 22 that I had worked for and saved up several summers worth of money to get, and my Crook tele that was a graduation present from my parents for graduating college. I had those two, an acoustic and that was it. I knew everything both instruments were capable of, and there wasn’t a need for anything else. I had a small board with a handful of pedals on it, and a Hot Rod Deluxe that served me perfectly.

I started out my addiction to trying pedals in 2012 to have something for “me”. At the time, we had just had our first child and life had flipped upside down. Free time was a thing of the past, and I’ll be the first to admit that it took several months to adapt. It was one of the most joy-filled times of my life, but also some of the hardest as I had to come to grips with being a Dad, getting very little sleep (he woke up every two hours until he was 2 years old). I felt like there was nothing left of me, just a bit of a warm body. So, at the time I tuned to TheGearPage.net and lost a bit of my soul in the emporium as I proceeded to flip pedals for the next two years. I won’t admit how many came and went, but I will say it was enough that I’m ashamed of it. The flip side was that I learned A LOT about tone, and that ended up leading me to a job in the industry, but at what cost? That was the slow descent into GAS-fueled craziness that went on up until a few months ago.

Gear became a distraction for me. It was (and still is) so easy to jump on Reverb or Facebook and browse around and think about the possibilities and ideas that *could* potentially come from owning such gear. There were times that I didn’t touch a guitar for weeks, just because of work or family obligations. I’ve always tried to make family first, but I’ll admit that the quick “escape” to looking at gear was far too easy to do, just like looking at any form of Social Media. I didn’t have time to practice, and chalked it up to “I wouldn’t remember what I practiced anyway, so what’s the point?” It became the same old tireless riffs, noodling and lead lines I’ve played hundreds of times in the past few years. I remembered bits and pieces of the songs I knew before, but for the most part my mind was blank from mindlessly noodling.

As the gear kept coming in and out of the house, I started noticing that the excitement of getting the new gear was dwindling. The Silver Sky was a prime example. I was SO excited to get it; the excitement of the chase was exhilarating. Finally got it, had it for a few weeks, and ended up selling it. My mistake was viewing it as a collectible instead of a tool to make music, and I didn’t want to get comfortable with it and risk messing it up. So, my wife wanted a new deck on the back of the house, and I sold it to fund that. Two weeks later (after I realized the deck wouldn’t cost as much as I thought it would), I had a yearning for the Silver Sky again. My thought process was that I hadn’t given it enough time to properly get comfortable with it and make it work for my style of playing. I was very fortunate that the person I sold it to was willing to let me buy it back and lived locally and is a great friend, so I got it back. I immediately made the tweaks that I felt made it more playable and comfortable…and it did…for a while. After playing it for a few weeks, I decided that I’d sell my American Pro strat and just consolidate my gear down. If it wasn’t being used, then it’s time for it to go. I decided to plug the strat in one last time before boxing it up to sell and realized that I was honestly was more comfortable with the strat than the Silver Sky. I decided to wait, and compared them head to head again after my few adjustments on the SS. In the end, it came down to comfort and sound. The strat just had that more classic sound that my ears wanted to hear, which is the exact reason I wanted to own one in the first place (after a decade of not owning one).

It definitely dawned on me a few months ago when someone said “Alex plays guitar. Play something!” I locked up tighter than you can imagine because it’s been WAY too long since I’ve played in front of a group of people that aren’t my family. All of the things I could have easily pulled out of my mind in 2011 were nearly gone, and I found myself cutting pedals on, switching guitars, and overall just making a fool of myself (despite the compliments) because I haven’t played that much in the past few months. The thing was that I didn’t feel comfortable on any of the stuff I was using because I had a revolving door on gear, more interested to see what sounds they could make out of sheer boredom or curiosity than putting them into context in a song or how they would fit my playing needs. My distraction became my addiction, which has led to my passion for it dwindling significantly. Gear-buying and flipping have become a quick outlet to solve boredom and other typical life stuff, a quick thrill that is way too easy and generally has left me feeling lackluster in most respects.

Working at Wampler has really opened my eyes to the market, and what people like and don’t like, and what other companies strive for, excel at, and fall short on (including us). Jason put it best (and this has stuck with me since he said it) that “If you have to use a gimmick to sell it, it’s usually because it can’t stand on its own without it.” And in many cases, that’s completely true. Just because something has fancy bells and whistles doesn’t mean it’s practical or sounds that great. Learning a wealth of knowledge from Brian and Jason has opened my eyes to think more critically of what I’m thinking about buying, and for the most part, my addiction has slowly started to dwindle. Some of the pedals I would have bought immediately, I take a step back and question whether I’d actually use them, or if I’m just curious to try them? 9/10 times it’s because I’m just bored and curious, and now even the curiosity has gone somewhat. The good part is that my board has had minimal changes, my guitars and amps are more solid than ever with very little moving gear, and my comfort is growing back. Brian sent a prototype to me about a month ago, and that has truly inspired me more than anything lately. Not to noodle, but to get whatever I can get out of it (and the rest of my gear) without thinking “Well it would be cool to be able to make this sound now and then.” The reality of it is that if it’s not fun anymore, what’s the point? Admittedly over the past couple of years, fun HAS meant just trying pedals. But at the end, I felt like despite all of the stuff I’ve used, it didn’t add much value to me as a player. Yes, I know what each one of them is capable of, but aside from talking on gear forums, what good is it really going to do me?

I know this has drawn on and has a lot of information you’ve seen before, but for me, I think this is a step in the right direction to admitting I have a problem, and I’m trying to take steps in making my own life a bit better. I’ve been on a mass exodus with gear, anything that’s not being frequently used is pretty much being sold. It feels pretty good to get the space back, not having the money essentially just sitting on the shelf not being used doesn’t hurt either. Since I’ve started decluttering and dropping the excess, my playing has started improving again, my desire to mindlessly search YouTube for demos and Reverb for killer deals have decreased too. GAS still exists, but it’s not frantic like it has been over the past few years. My point with this whole blog is basically to say do what makes you happy but also think critically about what you’re doing and what you hope to be able to achieve in the future and adjust your trajectory accordingly.

I’ll leave you with a quote from Jack Canfield that seems appropriate (at least to my situation): “As you begin to take action toward the fulfillment of your goals and dreams, you must realize that not every action will be perfect. Not every action will produce the desired result. Not every action will work. Making mistakes, getting it almost right, and experimenting to see what happens are all part of the process of eventually getting it right.”